The taking of a Swan
by xavierh
Summary: Raised like brothers, Paul, Jacob, and Sam are well known around Forks for their player ways and mischiefs despite the secretive lives they lead and the unspoken power they hold within La Push. Their lives will be swept away when the Chief of Police's daughter arrives in town after a long time. [AU: Loosely based in the lore of The Taking of Persephone]
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own twilight.

Prologue.

* * *

"If you stare more longingly, I bet someone will write a song about this." His brother said. "I think you should go talk to her."

He had been looking at _her_. The way she frowned and kept putting the same hair strand behind her ear was mesmerizing and vaguely intoxicating. He could certainly walk up to her right that instant and say something, and her face would brighten up and she would say his name with that voice of hers, and then he would fall to his knees and become hers. But the situation was farfetched at the moment. If he did, he would bring heaven and hell together and make it worse on himself. His gaze went then went back to his brother, and with a broken smile he just turned the other way.

"I don't feel like it, let's go meet your girl instead." His voice came out clean and relaxed, but he was hurting inside. It was torture to stay near her.

"Don't complain when someone tries to take her away." The other replied, knowing what his brother was trying to do.

Before leaving, he didn't look back, well knowing that he would regret it later.

* * *

Hello there! This is a new story that will hopefully run on the shorter side, based on The Taking of Persephone! It is not my main objective to complete this just now because I am working on a Bella/Paul ff called "Rough Around the Edges" (make sure to check it out!) and this one is mostly for my self-indulgence. I am not even sure what pairing it will be just yet (if you have a preference for Team Jacob or Team Paul let me know in a comment!). I just promise this won't stay like this.


	2. Chapter 1 Like that

Disclaimer: I do not own twilight.

 **Chapter 1.- Like that.**

* * *

When Paul Lahote woke up his head was pounding and his whole body felt sore. It didn't take him long to realize that he was also naked. He vaguely remembered asking his brothers to get him smashed and take him back home the night before, but there was no sign that he was home or that his brothers were around at all. Next to him, a blonde with long tanned legs laid asleep covered only by bedsheets – like himself – and with her makeup and hair made a mess, completely passed out. He growled in annoyance at the idea of a one-night stand. Wanting to quickly leave wherever he was, he tiptoed around the room in the darkness and looked for his clothes and stuff. The dim light from the early morning allowed him to find his suit, phone, and car keys. He wondered if he drove there while hammered or someone else did. He begged for the later. Paul thought of leaving a note behind, but knowing that he wouldn't give away his number or any other contact information, he just left the crappy motel room there were probably in.

Once outside, Paul noticed that he was in the only Ball 8 motel in the area, with Forks just a few miles down the road. He groaned thinking that Jessica Stanley, the town's gossip, would open her big mouth about Paul visiting her family's motel. Jessica would always happen to check in her brothers and something told him that he wasn't the exception the night before. He clicked the alarm in his car to find it sitting obnoxiously across two parking spaces. He sighed and headed towards it, thinking that his day couldn't get any worse, but oh boy it did.

"Mr. Lahote," a familiar voice said behind him.

It was the Chief of Police in Forks, Charlie Swan. He was in uniform and ready to stir Paul's mood of the day. The Quileute drew a polite – but not genuine – smile in his face before turning around to meet the man talking to him.

"Hello, Chief," Paul's smile widened but his eyes remained dead serious. "How are you?"

"Oh, not as good as you, I can tell," Charlie laughed. "I would like to say that it's surprising to see you here, but with the amount of times your brothers have been caught coming out of these rooms, it's only natural that I'd find you roaming around as well."

"Unlike my brothers, I can say that I recently got acquittanced with the place," Paul muttered through his teeth. "In any case, you seem to be here often enough to catch my brothers."

"Oh, there's enough disturbance calls for me to catch your siblings coming in and out of this place," the chief said in a mocking tone. "I hope you're not the reason I was called in." Charlie's smiled widened and a wicked spark appeared on his eyes. Paul gulped in fear of facing the law. Thankfully, some yelling came out of a room that Paul hadn't been in.

"I think that's your call," he said, turning to spot the exact room where the commotion came from, just a few doors down the one he came out. "Have a good day, Chief."

"You too, Mr. Lahote," the police officer greeted with a sarcastic smile while Paul waked past him and reached his car. "Oh, and Paul..."

"Yes?" The guy didn't bother turning around while unlocking the vehicle.

"I think you've heard that my daughter is coming to town, so I hope that you and your brothers will stay away from her while she's around." The Chief of Police replied grimly.

"Don't worry, Chief. We are well aware." Paul gulped once more before rushing into his car.

* * *

As he sped through the highway that would take him to La Push, Paul cursed his brothers between his teeth. His day was not only ruined by the realization that they had abandoned him when he was drunk, but by the fact that he had sex with a stranger and that he bumped into Chief of Police Swan to make the matter worse. Paul didn't have a good reputation around the reservation and Forks, and the last thing that he wanted was to instigate others to talk about him. He wondered if his siblings were in similar situations and assumed they wouldn't be home once he arrived.

Unlike his two brothers, Paul wasn't the player people made him out to be. The middle brother of three, he somehow always ended up dragging around the tail that his older and younger brother created for themselves. Women, parties, money, power – that was all for Sam and Jacob. Paul was calmer and less likely to waste his time in worthless things such as an easy fuck every other night or flaunting his money wherever he went. People often misunderstood his good looks and his relationship with both Jacob and Sam for him being another man whore like them. He wouldn't change either of them for anything in the world, but he had to admit that if they weren't his family, he would probably avoid them at all costs. And talking of avoiding the two of them, the cars of both his siblings were missing from the home they shared in La Push.

The house they grew up in – the Black household – was just a normal two-story house near the wooded area of the preserve. Paul's earliest memories were of that house, of Sam and then Jacob, playing with him in the porch or going off to explore the forest that extended behind the house. He thought of the man that raised the three of them in the house: William Black Sr. The old man had passed away last year, but his presence still resonated within the old house. Paul looked at his chair, unmoved from its usual place in the porch. He sighed and went ahead, patting the chair as a sign of respect when he passed by. Inside, no one was waiting for him, so he just went up the stairs into his room.

The feeling of Paul's adolescence was still there. His bookcase was full of old DVDs and Blue-Rays, some VHS tapes still resting on the top to accumulate dust. A desk and an old lamp to his right, facing the window that would let him see the tree line behind the house, and an old closed next to it, probably still hiding the dirty magazines that Sam gifted him while in middle school and some of his high school clothing. Nothing hung on the off-white-kind-of-grey walls of his room, making it seem too neat for the room that a college student had left behind. He didn't have posters of cars and bands like Jacob did, nor he hung pictures of Maxim and Playboy models like Sam did. It was nostalgic nonetheless.

Paul jumped onto the bed and was soon engulfed in by a cloud of dust. The place was too abandoned to be habitable, but he rolled on the bed to take a nap anyway. The smell of humidity and neglect flooded his nostrils and took him back to a time when he didn't have to worry too much about long-legged blondes that he didn't know or Chiefs of Police warning him to stay away from a daughter he didn't even contemplated on getting himself involved with. He found himself drifting away to memories of better times, when he was much more innocent.

* * *

Paul woke up near noon, still hungover and tired, but convinced that he would just waste away his day if he didn't. The house was a little abandoned, but still had the basics of electricity, gas, and water, so he decided to take a warm shower to cleanse himself from a night of clubbing and sex. The shower that he used to share with his siblings suddenly seemed too small, making him remember that he grew a few inches after moving away and that he had built up some muscle over the years. Anyhow, he let the hot water from the shower hit his body and take him away from the current situation. His shower took long enough for him to drift away until there was no more hot water and he had to leave the comfort of the water behind. While stepping out of the bathroom he heard a car approach the driveway, so he hurried to get changed and ready before whichever of his brothers could come up. Knowing his clothes had yet to arrive, he rustled through his old closet and put on some joggers and a simple V-neck he remembered were too big on him, to realize now that they comfortably hugged his toned body.

"Pauly!" Sam's annoying voice resonated through the house. "Come down you, sneaky bastard!"

Paul huffed, incredulous at Sam's inability to behave the way a 28-year-old would. Was that guy really the oldest? Knowing that his brother would come up and look for him himself, Paul walked downstairs to avoid the hassle. Sam was still wearing the suit he had the previous night, but now his neckline was covered in different colors of lipstick. Sam was not really that attractive and, if anything, Jacob and him could easily beat him in terms of looks: Sam was tall and muscly, although not as much as himself and didn't have the soft features that the youngest of them sport and, in reality, the pitch-black eyes were the only thing that actually worked for him, otherwise making him any other native American guy you could spot in La Push. Jacob had once guessed it was the money that attracted the women, but Paul knew that Sam exuded confidence and power and that made people really attracted to him. He thought that he probably had the opposite problem of Sam's – he had the looks, just not the personality.

"Man, you look like crap." Sam laughed. "Was it good at least?"

"Was what good?" Paul asked uninterested, passing by his brother and going into the kitchen.

"The sex." Sam replied in excitement, completely ignoring his brother's attempt at avoiding the conversation, and promptly followed him into the kitchen. "C'mon, Paul, she was _soooooo_ fuckable. Those legs? Don't' even get me started, I was actually mad you took her to yourself."

"I don't really know." Paul shrugged. "I was too hammered to remember."

"Damn it, Pauly!" Sam cursed between his teeth. "You get some with a hot-ass girl from Portland and you still don't bother to remember a thing? Disappointing."

"Only to you." The younger one scrambled through the kitchen until he found something that didn't require the stove and hadn't been expired for the past decade. He settled for instant coffee and some packaged oatmeal. "We have to get Mary to do some shopping and clean the house for us."

"We should go around and get someone to fix everything else as well… I don't think that anyone has been doing anything in the house since the old man passed." Sam agreed, suddenly going into serious mode. "Can you believe it's been a year?"

Paul shook his head, thinking that it was weird to be standing in the kitchen without having his grandfather call him from another room. "Have you heard anything about Levi?" Paul wondered. "Didn't he want to live here for a while?"

"Well, yeah, but I said no." Sam said with a hint of anger in his voice. "How about Peter?"

"He is somewhere in Tacoma too high to care." Paul sighed. "My best guess is that he stopped caring when mom married Billy."

"Well, it was truly something else when they did." Sam mumbled.

Paul knew what he was talking about. Their mother, a free-spirited woman with an awful taste in men, married born-for-duty Billy Black after being close friends for years. A mismatch that they were glad to see, even for the short time that it happened. Also, like the rest of the Black family members, Billy had passed away years ago. Paul respected him a lot when he was still around, maybe not as much as William Sr., but he still did, and he knew that Sam probably felt the same. The mood always turned grim when he came up in a conversation.

"Anyhow…" Paul said after a long silence. "Where's our little brother?"

"He's probably still asleep next to some chick he met at the club yesterday." Sam said, unbothered. "After you left, I really stopped paying attention to anything that wasn't female."

"Amazing." Paul muttered. "Are you guys going to stop playing around some day?"

"Only when I am tied down." Sam answered with a smile, to which Paul raised an eyebrow.

"Well, aren't you already?"

"Oh, no, Pauly." Sam shook his head and crossed his arms on his chest. "The wedding is yet to happen."

Another car approached the car and a smile drew itself on Paul's face. "Well, that wedding might not happen if Leah sees you like that." Paul laughed.

"Shit."

Sam's fiancé was coming down her Jeep and looked pissed. Paul enjoyed the view quite much while his brother panicked behind him. Sam rushed upstairs while clumsily taking off the incriminating suit, begging to god between his teeth that she wouldn't dare go after him in the shower. Paul tranquilly sipped on the coffee, trying to take in the whole scene. Oh, he loved to see his brother in trouble.

* * *

Hello! This is the first chapter, and although I still haven't introduced all of the great charcaters I wanted, we've got a glimpse at some of them! After a long thought, I decided to make Paul and Bella our main couple (what a surprise). This is somehow different from my original style, so hopefully I did well in the writing. Thank you for reading, much love xx

-Xavier.


End file.
